Guidelines for patients on how to use email to communicate with the FSHS
Our guidelines are based on the draft guidelines published by the Finnish Medical Association (FMA) in 2002 on the use of email in patient-doctor interaction. The following principles were adopted on 30 September 2003 by the FSHS Management Team as part of the FSHS treatment practices.
| 1. You can use email to communicate with FSHS care personnel if mutually agreed in advance |
| regarding issues such as: |
| - your laboratory test results; |
| - monitoring of your symptoms and condition; |
| - prescription renewals (when you need prescription medicines regularly or repeatedly) |
| 2. Email is not suitable for urgent medical care or other emergency cases |
| 3. When writing an email message to FSHS care staff: |
| - include your name and date of birth but not your personal identity code; |
| - use "neutral" subject headings; |
| - only send information that is related to your question. |
| 4. Avoid using email in particularly sensitive or personal issues. |
| 5. Your email will be processed as required by legistation, and felevant details will be included in your |
| personal FSHS medical record. |
| 6. Our professional staff will make sure your emails remain confidential but, due to technical and other |
| information security factors, we cannot guarantee the absolute security of email information. |
| Therefore you should be aware of the shortcomings in information security and security risks |
| involved in email communications. |
| 7. You are personally responsible for ensuring that the equipment you use for email communications |
| is as reliable as possible and that other people do not get access to your email messages. |
| 8. The FSHS provides online services for general health advice. They are available for inquiries that |
| are within their specific scope. |